> You're saying that inalienable rights might exist, depending on US policy?
Yes, in practice if not in principle or statute. American citizens and their citizen children have been murdered by drones without a jury trial or public hearing, or much of any due process which may be examined by the public openly. We take the US at their word when we say inalienable rights exist, but their behavior suggests that the US doesn’t respect inalienable rights or view them as an impediment to implementing unconstitutional US policy or performing acts contravening said inalienable rights.
> If the US doesn't respect inalienable rights, then non-citizens should have them?
Extradition to US has been blocked on a case-by-case basis by foreign courts due to observable effects of American courts not even meeting their own regulatory bar of speedy, fair, public trials, trials where you may confront your accuser in open court, with a jury of your peers. Parallel construction makes a mockery of the investigatory chain of evidence. Fruit of the poison tree doctrine is DOA. Secret grand juries are lied to in order to force unjustifiable, indefensible charges. Secret evidence and secret trials. Are secret convictions and secret imprisonment next? Indefinite detention without charge already gets US government 90% of the way there.
> I don't see any connection, and you seem to also be saying you believe in inalienable rights which are alienable.
I believe in inalienable rights, in that the concept is an unequivocal social good, but rights are not only what are claimed, but that which can be exercised freely and without undue restraint; I also believe that the government doesn’t act as if it has a good faith belief in ensuring that inalienable rights exist to begin with, nor does the US seem intent on defending them in all cases. In practice, inalienable rights don’t exist. This should change in my view.
> Inalienable rights are an abstract idea that can't exist.
You left out the first part, where I said “in practice.” As in, it should never occur that our human rights are able to be circumvented, curtailed, or allowed to be violated. That our rights are violated in practice, in reality, is bad and should not happen, and proves that we must act as if inalienable rights are not some platonic ideal, but a lived reality, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
To the degree we are alienated from our innate human rights, it is because we as a society allow it, accommodate it, justify it, and excuse it. It is up to us all, individually and collectively, to do better. We can do better, and must, or we lack the courage of our convictions, and thus prove that the ideal remains an idea only, and not real, not a lived experience in and of reality. Arguing about the “existence” of abstract concepts is not my point. We embody these ideals with our thoughts, beliefs, and especially actions - what we do or do not do in accordance with our stated principles of inalienable rights.
We only have the rights we claim to have, rights we claim as ours by expressing them, even when others disagree, and defying any and all who would deny them to us. Inalienable rights are not up for debate to those who claim them. To have inalienable rights is to talk the talk and walk the walk.
To say inalienable rights exist is not a truth claim about the nature of reality; it is drawing a line in the sand and picking this hill to die on.
> Rights that were never violated could not be conceived of as rights, like "hot" wouldn't have any meaning if there wasn't "cold".
I agree wholeheartedly. Ironically, we discovered human rights by violating those of ourselves and of others, until the consequences of and backlash against such opprobrium became juice not worth the squeeze, deciding not to, and accepting nothing less than our continued newfound freedom.
>You left out the first part, where I said “in practice.”
Yes, that's what I was addressing. I am saying that "in practice" doesn't work as a modifier, because being "inalienable" is an abstract quality which does not pertain to real things or events.
Like "happy" applied to sand, or "green" applied to thoughts.
I address this when I say that rights are that which is claimed, by force if necessary. That’s what keeps the entire nation intact, folks and institutions, and legal systems are just an extension of the threat of force, and the system has now bent back on itself like an ouroboros. Rights are never given. They are taken from those who would deny them us. It’s an affirmative claim about your belief system in society to say you believe in inalienable rights. It’s patriotic to believe in this common goal, in my opinion.
Yes, in practice if not in principle or statute. American citizens and their citizen children have been murdered by drones without a jury trial or public hearing, or much of any due process which may be examined by the public openly. We take the US at their word when we say inalienable rights exist, but their behavior suggests that the US doesn’t respect inalienable rights or view them as an impediment to implementing unconstitutional US policy or performing acts contravening said inalienable rights.
> If the US doesn't respect inalienable rights, then non-citizens should have them?
Extradition to US has been blocked on a case-by-case basis by foreign courts due to observable effects of American courts not even meeting their own regulatory bar of speedy, fair, public trials, trials where you may confront your accuser in open court, with a jury of your peers. Parallel construction makes a mockery of the investigatory chain of evidence. Fruit of the poison tree doctrine is DOA. Secret grand juries are lied to in order to force unjustifiable, indefensible charges. Secret evidence and secret trials. Are secret convictions and secret imprisonment next? Indefinite detention without charge already gets US government 90% of the way there.
> I don't see any connection, and you seem to also be saying you believe in inalienable rights which are alienable.
I believe in inalienable rights, in that the concept is an unequivocal social good, but rights are not only what are claimed, but that which can be exercised freely and without undue restraint; I also believe that the government doesn’t act as if it has a good faith belief in ensuring that inalienable rights exist to begin with, nor does the US seem intent on defending them in all cases. In practice, inalienable rights don’t exist. This should change in my view.